It’s fantastic that Tom Baker has got involved with the excellent Big Finish team, along with Louise Jameson (for these stories) and Mary Tamm (for a further set, with titles and authors still to be announced).

I’d been hoping to be involved with the “Leela” stories, and was approached in January this year about writing something based on Nerva Beacon. This went through a number of iterations, all the usual stuff before a script is actually commissioned: initial idea, outline, remove something a bit too like the TV series, add/remove K-9, four-episode outline, two-episode outline… Until alas, at the end of March, it became a zero-episode outline. BF felt that the story wasn’t working out, and so it didn’t go to script. Mine was initially called The Unwanted Army, but by the end its title was Flames of the Karvadi.

This is third time unlucky with Tom Baker for me. I didn’t get very far with the original BBC Audio project in August 2008 that eventually became Hornets’ Nest. At the time, BBC Audio was variously calling that “Project Beehive” and “Codename Felt Hat”. Then I was one of the writers who Big Finish asked to pitch ideas in March 2009, when they were at the point of one of their periodic approaches to Tom Baker. One of the several ideas I had was a reworked version of what eventually became Ferril’s Folly.

So although those all came to naught, I did get the chance to write that “Companion Chronicle” set in the Fourth Doctor’s era. And even if things don’t work out in the end, as inevitably can happen in the overall process, it’s always nice to be asked. Not everything makes it from pitch to publish.

I won’t say too much more about Flames of the Karvadi here, because the location and timing was specified as part of my original brief from BF. From the title of Nick Briggs’s replacement, I don’t think I’ve given too much away so far! But obviously, if I decide not to reuse my own original story elements, characters, and monsters for something else, I may post the story outline here.

In the meantime, I’m looking forward to hearing the new Tom Baker audios in January. One additional exciting snippet from that DWM news story is that Geoffrey Beevers is returning as the Master in Alan Barnes’s season finale.